05Studio / marketing site

Northlights — Studio & portfolio site

The studio's own flagship experience: WebGL aurora hero, scroll-driven storytelling, MDX case studies, bilingual marketing, and a full admin for inbox, projects, services, and outreach. It is our live proof of how we design and ship product-grade sites.

Web
Back to work
Year
2022
Client
Northlights
Role
Product, design, engineering
Industry
Studio / marketing site
Northlights — Studio & portfolio site

What we built

A single Next.js app that is both the public face of Northlights and the operational hub for leads and content.

Public experience

  • Custom WebGL hero shader with Three.js, GSAP + ScrollTrigger, and Lenis smooth scroll—without fighting reduced-motion preferences.
  • English and Albanian routes with shared design tokens and locale-aware navigation.
  • MDX case studies with structured metadata, JSON-LD, sitemap, and Open Graph tuned for search and sharing.

Admin & data

  • Prisma and PostgreSQL for contact requests, services, technology badges, testimonials, and editable site settings.
  • NextAuth-backed dashboard: inbox, project CRUD, testimonials, global copy, and templated outreach email to prospects.
  • Outbound mail through the same Resend / DreamHost SMTP patterns we use on client work.

Stack

  • Next.js 15 App Router, React 19, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS v4.
  • Content and ordering in the database so featured work and copy can change without a redeploy.
Next project

Zyra e Avokatisë Asqeri — Albanian Law Office

Zyra e Avokatisë Asqeri is the digital home of an established Albanian law firm. Visitors explore practice areas, browse a searchable archive of national legislation, and book a free initial consultation in three languages. Once engaged, clients enter a private workspace where every appointment, message, and document lives in one place — fully bilingual and accessible from any device.

02Capabilities

The full
build stack.

We move across the stack so you don’t have to coordinate four agencies. Discovery, design, engineering, data, and operations under one roof — with seniors on the keyboard, not just the kickoff deck.
  • Discovery workshops → clickable prototype → production scope
  • Design systems, motion, and accessibility baked in from day one
  • Post-launch care: monitoring, on-call, and incremental releases
  • Senior engineers on the keyboard from day one — no offshored juniors
  • Weekly demos, written changelogs, and one Slack channel per project

14 practice areas — we mix only the lanes your roadmap actually needs.

First reply
< 24h
Median delivery
10 weeks
Production uptime
99.95%

Web platforms

Marketing sites, portals, and dashboards built on a modern stack — strong typography, snappy interactions, and SEO that actually ranks.

Next.jsTailwindRSC

Marketplaces

Two-sided products with real moderation, payments, and search — not a Facebook group with a logo.

StripePostgresMapLibre

Mobile apps

Cross-platform apps shipped to App Store and Play with shared design tokens and push notifications.

ExpoReact Native

AI & automation

LLM-backed assistants, intake copilots, and document understanding — typed JSON in, useful actions out.

OpenAIVercel AIpgvector

Integrations

Connecting CRMs, calendars, billing, mail, and government systems so the team stops copying values between tabs.

WebhooksOAuthCron

Data & search

Pragmatic data models, fast indexes, full-text and vector search, daily syncs — the boring parts done right.

PrismaElasticpgvector

Security & access control

Role-based permissions, audit trails, session hardening, and secrets management so regulated teams can sleep at night.

RBACNextAuthAudit logs

Design systems & brand

Coherent typography, spacing, motion, and dark-mode-ready palettes — plus reusable components so every screen feels like one product.

FigmaTokensMotion

Messaging & notifications

Transactional email, in-app threads, digest jobs, and optional SMS or push — wired to real templates and delivery monitoring.

NodemailerQueuesWebhooks

Privacy & compliance

Data minimisation, retention policies, export/delete flows, and consent-aware tracking so you stay aligned with GDPR-style expectations.

GDPREncryptionExports

Analytics & observability

Event pipelines, funnels, error tracking, and uptime dashboards — know what broke, who felt it, and whether the last deploy helped.

EventsSentryLogs

Cloud & DevOps

Preview environments, database migrations, blue-green deploys, and infra-as-code so releases are boring in the best way.

VercelCI/CDPostgres

Platform engineering

Internal tools, admin consoles, feature flags, and shared libraries that let your product team ship without waiting on a platform team.

Admin UIFlagsSDKs

Performance & Core Web Vitals

Image optimisation, streaming, edge caching, and bundle discipline — fast on 3G, smooth with reduced motion, and measurable in Lighthouse.

RSCCDNLighthouse
Currently booking · Q3 2026 onwards

Have a project worth getting right?

Tell us what you are building. We reply within two business days with honest feedback, a ballpark timeline, and a fixed price for the first phase.
Start a projecthello@northlights.tech